Boreal Cabin Flora and Fauna

Our family headed out to our cabin on Lac La Ronge for a night this weekend. The weather was nice and the mosquitoes were thick at night. If there is any good reason to have an indoor toilet, it is to avoid needing to opening the door at night and letting in the mosquitoes. Unfortunately, we only have an outdoor toilet (and spent half the night killing mosquitoes). However, we do have a dog who is more than happy to escort people to the outhouse.
Morning on the lake:

We live amid the Canadian boreal forest, the flora and fauna of which I have tried to learn a bit about. I really can't name many of the trees, but I find the flowers and berries not to hard to identify (and I'm sure that there will be an iphone app for that soon too).
Corydalis sempervirens:

There's a good reason that C. sempervirens may be familiar to some gardeners. Dicentra (bleeding hearts) and several other varieties of Corydalis are kept in perennial gardens and are all members of the Family Fumariaceae, the fumitories. One other corydalis that might grow in a northern garden is golden corydalis (zone 3), though the lovely blue and purple-flowered corydalis are listed for zone 5 and are unlikely to thrive.
Our only form of mosquito control at the moment, found sleeping on our screen door:

The solitary screen-bat disappeared by morning, fortunately, because we had to remove the screen. Some animal (bear?) had shredded the bottom half of it last fall, probably in an effort to raid our cabin for imagined food. We also noticed high-pitched squeaking coming from the space between the brick chimney and the exterior wall. The space is entirely outside the cabin, so it is okay that a colony of bats has decided to live there. We would just like them to eat MORE mosquitoes. In case anyone worries, there have been no rabies cases in the north so we aren't particularly concerned about that either (vs. my father who was bitten by a rabid bat several years ago in southern BC). We also felt sorry for Kona in the middle of the night and brought her inside to escape the mosquitoes.
Kona, the husky-malamute:

For the first time, I saw a beaver swimming in the lake outside our cabin. You might say that I musn't get out on the lake very much. That is true, since I have a garden to tend to and I like my hot showers in my house. I wouldn't have noticed the beaver, except that I heard a tremendous splash from inside the cabin, like someone dropped a large stone in the water. Then, I noticed a brown head swimming away from the concentric circles of disturbed lake water. He slapped the water a few more times, but speedily swam away before I got outside with my camera. Next time, loud beaver.

RLM Rocks My World

Resident-lawnmower-man has been doing a lot of heavy lifting recently. My alpine bed and some other rock-work next to the house are seeing some progress. My alpine bed is a new project to give me a little more garden space, remove some lawn, and create a place to feature small rock garden and alpine perennials.
Present state of the alpine bed:

Realizing that alpine plants are ridiculously small and slow-growing however, I will be adding a few low-growing conifers. I was thinking about dwarf balsam fir, the tiniest mugo pine I can get, and a birdsnest spruce. Hopefully they still have some of these at the garden centers in Prince Albert.
RLM is collecting some huge blasted rocks with machinery borrowed from a neighbour. These rocks will be added to the center of the alpine bed.

The lake across the street from our house. Just imagine some loon-calls and mosquito bites, and you can enjoy the experience right there at your computer.


Guess who has company for a few days? Kona's sister is in town for a visit. We're happy to see them together -- they hadn't seen each other in over a year! They can howl in harmony at ambulances tonight. Kona is on the left:

Lake Ice and Aruncus Dioicus

We had to wonder what the tourists at the campground were thinking this past weekend. It was the May long weekend and the first weekend the provincial campgrounds are open. As usual, folks with boats on trailers drove past our house on the way to the provincial campground (Nut Point). This year, the lake has been slow to thaw and the boats would not be going far without an icebreaker! Sorry, folks.

Here are some pictures of the lake this evening, near the RCMP detachment. The tree buds have not opened yet and the trees are still very bare.



View over the Legion building, towards Lac La Ronge:

Picture of Aruncus dioicus, a large bushy perennial also called Goat's beard. I like the red stems and how they contrast with the green foliage of my other perennials in the spring. The plant turns green later and produces fluffy clusters of white flowers that look a bit like an astilbe (though blooms are sadly short-lived). These plants like to stay moist, though mine live in average soil with afternoon shade and they do well.

Ice Chimes and Giant Coleus

The Lac La Ronge ice is quickly being replaced with rippling water now. Nobody's taking trips out to their cabins for a little while now, except perhaps that guy we see with one of those airboats that travels over ice and water as if he were in the northern version of the everglades. I hear he lives out there year-round. Impressive. We walked out on the pier across the street and I was really taken by the tinkling of the ice in the water. The lake ice is about a foot thick, and vertical shards of ice are continually "calving" off the leading edges . Millions of glassy ice sticks float around, glinting in the sunshine and banging against each other, making a sound like hundreds of bamboo wind chimes. Heavenly!

Meanwhile, down in the fertile grounds of the basement, my coleus grows bigger than most coleus I have ever seen before. Check out the photo -- these plants only have about 3 sets of true leaves! This is a Kong Rose coleus, I suppose the "Kong" series name denoting their size. These are supposed to get 18" tall. I'll probably be putting them in a whisky barrel planter under the poplar, so they are in shade.